Abortion Like Hiring a Hitman - Pope Francis

16.10.2018

Pope Francis has compared abortion to hiring a hitman to “take out a human life to solve a problem.”

Addressing tens of thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience, the Pope said some people justify abortion as respecting others’ rights. But he asked, “How can an act that suppresses innocent and defenceless life as it blossoms be therapeutic, civil or simply human?”

He asked if it was fair “to take out a human life” to solve a problem.

“Is it fair to hire a hitman to solve a problem? It is not fair. We cannot take out a human being, even if it is small,” he said.

In his off-the-cuff comments, he denounced what he called the contradiction of allowing “the suppression of human life in the mother’s womb in the name of safeguarding other rights.”

It was the second time in recent months that Pope Francis has expressed the Church’s longstanding opposition to abortion in stark terms.

In June, he denounced how some couples resort to pre-natal testing to see if their unborn babies have malformations and then choose to have an abortion, which he said was the “white glove” equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics programme.

Francis has framed both abortion and euthanasia as part of what he calls today’s “throwaway culture” where the sick, the poor, the elderly and the unborn are considered unworthy of protection and dignity by a society that prizes instead individual prowess and success.